abstract
| - %22Call Me%22 is a song composed by Tony Hatch for Petula Clark which became an easy listening standard via a hit version by Chris Montez.%22Call Me%22 first appeared as the title cut on a Petula Clark EP released in 1965 by Pye in the UK. %22Call Me%22 and the three other tracks on the EP: %22Heart%22, %22Everything in the Garden%22 and %22Strangers and Lovers%22 were also released on Clark's album I Know a Place (aka The New Petula Clark Album).Also in 1965 Chris Montez, who had scored the hit %22Let's Dance%22 in 1962 and subsequently dropped out of the music business, was invited to resume recording by A&M Records' founder Herb Alpert. Alpert was unhappy when Montez began recording for A&M in his previous Chicano rock style and personally suggested Montez shift to easy listening choosing %22Call Me%22 as the song to be Montez's debut single on A&M. Released in November 1965, %22Call Me%22 entered the Easy Listening Top 40 in Billboard that December entering the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1966; that March %22Call Me%22 peaked on the Easy Listening chart at #2 and on the Hot 100 at #22. the personnel on Chris Montez's version of the song included A&M session regulars Pete Jolly on piano, Don Peake and John Pisano on guitar, Julius Wectcher on marimba, Chuck Berghofer on bass, and Nick Ceroli on drums.Montez's version of %22Call Me%22 was released as a single in the UK on the Pye label in January 1966 but failed to chart: %22Call Me%22 was also a non-charting UK single release in 1966 for Lulu.Georgia Gibbs recorded %22Call Me%22 as the title cut for her final album released in 1966. Other versions of %22Call Me%22 have been recorded by Shirley Bassey, Vikki Carr, Eliane Elias, Astrud Gilberto, Peggy Lee, Trini Lopez, Mimì Bertè [Mia Martini], the New Classic Singers, Walter Wanderley, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Joanie Sommers and Nancy Wilson and the rock group Los Tijuana Five (Mexico). In October 2007, as part of his album Romancing the '60s, Frankie Valli also covered this song.Instrumental recordings of %22Call Me%22 are often used as background music in radio and television. In 1973 Bell Telephone utilized the song %22Call Me%22 as the company's advertising jingle.
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